


The Mark of an Aviator

by fractionallyfoxtrot



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Alternate Universe, Finding long lost love, In which Martin and Carl knew each other as teens, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractionallyfoxtrot/pseuds/fractionallyfoxtrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At eighteen, Martin made a promise, signed in ink, to a boy he loved just as much as aviation.</p>
<p>Eighteen years, six failed CPLs, and one very unique job later, Martin is shocked to discover that Carl, whose sheer dedication to unprofessionalism drives Martin mad, could very well be that boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mark of an Aviator

Martin eyed the needle poised above his skin nervously.

“Carl,” he whimpered, trying not to fidget, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Carl brought his chair forward and sat himself at Martin’s side. He put his arm around Martin’s shoulders, being careful to avoid contact with the bandage taped to his left wrist.

“It’ll be fine, Martin.” Carl pressed a quick kiss to his temple. “You can do this.”

Martin turned his head to look at Carl’s face, his boyfriend smiling as he offered him one small reassuring nod. Martin let out a shaky breath before nodding weakly in return. He looked back at the man armed with the needle.

“Okay,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut.

The initial pinch of the needle prick wasn’t as bad as Martin thought it would be. He didn’t flinch in the chair or curse at the top of his lungs as he thought he might. The continual pinches, however, the constant stinging as the man with the needle drew into his skin, hurt more and went on for longer than Martin anticipated.

He heard Carl’s voice beside him. “Martin, breathe.”

Martin let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He felt Carl pick up his free hand and thread their fingers together. He recognized the press of lips to his knuckles as Carl squeezed his hand.

“Martin, look at me.”

Martin hesitantly opened his eyes. Carl sat even closer than before, leaning forward until his nose almost touched Martin’s, forcing Martin to focus on him instead of the constant pain in his arm.

“Why are we doing this?” Carl asked.

“It’s a promise,” Martin mumbled.

“That?”

“That we’ll go to flight school and get our pilot licenses.”

“Together,” Carl added. He smiled, the simple, carefree expression managing to coax something similar out of Martin. “You and I will achieve our dream of being airline pilots and we’ll do it together. Every step of the way until we’re seated next to one another on the flight deck.”

Martin involuntarily winced at the pain, causing Carl to touch a hand to his face. Carl’s thumb rubbed gently against Martin’s cheek until he opened his eyes again.

“Are you sure we can do this?” Martin asked.

Carl grinned, leaning forward to catch Martin in a light kiss. Martin’s eyes fell closed as he let himself be distracted by the touch and taste of Carl’s mouth on his. Carl’s hand moved from his face to his shoulder, keeping Martin still as he instinctually tried to move into the kiss. He pulled back just as Martin started to forget where they were. Martin saw Carl glance down at his wrist and chanced a look himself. He was surprised to see the man cleaning his skin, wiping a hot towel over four freshly inked bars that declared his dream--their dream--for all to see.

Carl slid his hand up to Martin’s neck and laid their foreheads together.

“You can count on it.”

* * *

Martin glanced out the window and sighed in relief as the first signs of Fitton Airfield started to come into view. He was more than ready to get on the ground and away from the worst group of passengers they’d flown in a long time. It was bad enough that the weather delay forced him to cancel a van job; he hadn’t needed the passengers harping on and on about how it’d disrupted their weekend plans.

Martin flipped the switch to speak to ATC.

“Tower, this is-”

“Afternoon, Martin.”

Martin rolled his eyes at Carl’s interruption. “Tower,” he repeated, “this is Golf-Tango-India requesting clearance to land.”

“Take your pick.”

“That’s not how it works, Carl.”

“There’s no traffic in the immediate or adjacent airspace,” Carl replied, punctuating his sentence with what sounded suspiciously like a yawn. “There’s been no traffic all day. Both runways are clear in both directions. Take your pick, Martin. Land wherever you like.”

“I need you to give me clearance.”

“I am giving you clearance.”

“I need you to give me _proper_ clearance,” Martin clarified.

“Does it really matter?” Carl asked. “We both know what direction you’re coming from, we both know which runway is the correct choice; me pointing that out to you is just a formality.”

“Yes, Carl, it does really matter!” Martin snapped. “Because, despite what you seem to think, that formality is important. That formality confirms that you’re doing your job properly. It also confirms that I’m doing my job properly. That formality is also recorded so, in the highly unlikely event that anything goes wrong, we are both able to cite that we were doing our jobs properly. It’s a procedure required by the CAA to ensure the safest possible environment during one of the most dangerous parts of the flight. Now, this is Golf-Tango-India requesting clearance to land.”

A beat of silence hung in the air between the flight deck and the tower.

“Golf-Tango-India, you’re cleared to land on runway one-eight,” Carl said flatly.

The line of communication cut out abruptly after Carl finished talking. Martin flipped the switch on his end with more force than necessary. He checked the necessary instruments and looked out the window to orient himself as he prepared for landing. Martin caught sight of Douglas watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“What?”

“Bit harsh, don’t you think?”

“No,” Martin answered, “I don’t think so. Carl is consistently unprofessional in the way he conducts aircraft communication. Is it too much to ask for him to do his job properly?”

“Depends on how you judge ‘properly,’” Douglas shrugged. “Carl has one of the best safety records of all the ATC in the area. So he makes jokes on the comm sometimes; it’s just a bit of fun.”

“Aviation is a dangerous industry in which fatal accidents can occur from even small mistakes if proper procedures aren’t followed,” Martin argued. “It’s not ‘a bit of fun.’”

“Certainly not with you,” Douglas mumbled, turning his attention to the pre-landing checks.

Martin’s temper still hadn’t cooled by the time they were on stand. He left a protesting Douglas with the paperwork and marched across the airfield to the tower. He had not worked his whole life to become a pilot just to have his professionalism belittled and mocked on a daily basis. Douglas and Carolyn were a lost cause but if Carl was really as good at the other aspects of his job as Douglas let on, maybe, just maybe, Martin could convince him to treat their interactions with a little more respect.

The calm, rational discussion he’d been drafting in his mind vanished when Martin got to the top of the tower stairs and was greeted by the sight of Carl reclining in his chair, shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows and his feet propped up on the desk.

“Is there a reason you’re incapable of using standard phraseology during aircraft communication?” Martin demanded.

Carl glanced back at Martin before rubbing a hand over his brow.

“Not today, Martin.”

Martin stepped into the control room. “Yes, Carl, today. I am not going to tolerate your flagrant disregard for proper procedure for one more day. The manual clearly states that-”

“Unauthorized personnel are not allowed in the control room unless their presence is vital to the situation or otherwise approved by the senior controller on duty,” Carl cited, cutting Martin off. “And you, Martin, are neither.”

“That regulation means nothing to you, Carl, and you know it,” Martin argued. “You have Phil up here all the time.”

Carl stood from his seat and met Martin in the middle of the room. He was taller than Martin but only just; Carl looked down at him, anger hardening his usually carefree face.

“As approved by the senior controller on duty.” Carl tapped himself on the chest to emphasize his point before extending his arm to point at the stairs. “Now, get out of my control room.”

Martin pulled himself up to his full height and narrowed his eyes to match the intensity of Carl’s glare.

“No.”

“Get out,” Carl ordered again.

“Not until-”

“Get out!” Carl shouted, snapping his arm towards the stairs again.

Martin staggered back a few steps, shock, rather than the volume of Carl’s command, causing him to stumble on unsteady feet. Shock that widened his eyes and dropped his jaw. Shock triggered by a glimpse, a flash of skin, the hint of a mark that Martin hadn’t seen in years, at least on someone other than himself. Martin stared at Carl as he turned his back on him, moving back to his chair. He suddenly felt like he’d never seen the other man before despite a distant part of his mind screaming out that he most definitely had.

“Carl.” The name barely made it out of Martin’s mouth. He cleared his throat and took a small step forward. “Carl,” he said more clearly. “What... what’s that on your arm? On, on the left,” he stammered, “just above your hand.”

Carl had made it back to his seat but he hadn’t sat down yet. His hands gripped the back of the chair and he looked down as he turned his left arm over. Carl stared at it for a moment before holding his arm up, presenting the underside to Martin. Three black bars, no longer than an inch, ran horizontally across Carl’s skin, just below the heel of his hand. Martin touch a hand to his watch, drawn instinctively to the bars on his own arm. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He didn’t know what he’d been less prepared for: seeing those three bars or seeing any other mark inked into Carl’s skin.

“This?” Carl asked. Martin managed a small nod. “You don’t know? You _really_ don’t know?” Martin struggled and failed to process his frantic thoughts into words. Carl sighed as he shook his head, turning back towards his chair. “It’s nothing, Martin,” he mumbled, starting to pull down his sleeves. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Martin blurted out, suddenly finding his tongue. “Of course it does. What is it, Carl?”

“Stripes!” Carl snapped, whirling around. He held his arm up and pointed at the three bars. “They’re stripes, okay? Three little stripes that match the ones on your arm,” he said, pointing at Martin, who’d raised a hand to his watch again, “assuming you haven’t had them removed. Three little stripes,” Carl repeated, pushing his sleeves down, “that represent a naive, childish promise that we would go to flight school and get our pilot licenses together.”

Martin wrung his hand over his watch as he stood stunned and silent. He couldn’t take his eyes off Carl, the other man sitting atop the desk and rubbing his face with his hands. Martin stared in disbelief as, with every blink of his eyes, Carl looked more and more like _his_ Carl.

“You...” Martin paused to let out a nervous breath. “You remember that?”

“Of course I remember that,” Carl said, dropping his hands and looking up at Martin with annoyance. "We were eighteen. It was a Saturday. I-” Carl cut himself off. He let out a curt breath. “I held your hand,” he continued, his tone reluctantly softer. “We got drunk afterwards and you wouldn’t stop singing ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.’ Did you really think I would forget?”

Carl’s steady gaze held down Martin’s ability to speak. He stood up again, advancing a few steps towards Martin.

“Why do you think I’m here, Martin?” he asked, throwing his arms out. “At this stupid airfield where we get twelve planes a day? _Twelve_ , if we’re lucky! It’s enough to drive a person mad!”

Carl turned away, running his hands through his hair.

“I must be mad,” he muttered, dropping down onto the desk again, “sitting in this damn tower, day after day, week after week, year after fucking year, just...” Carl sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing his brow; Martin had never seen him look so tired. “Hoping,” he said quietly. “Just hoping that you’d remember, assuming it was worth remembering at all.”

The words, ‘Of course it was,’ were on the tip of Martin’s tongue but he never got the chance to say them.

Without a thought, Martin closed the short distance between them, took Carl’s face in his hands, and kissed him. Any lingering doubt that this man wasn’t the boy Martin loved at eighteen disappeared the second their lips touched. He knew that taste, he knew that touch; there were few things in the world that Martin understood better than that kiss. His fingers traced through the hair on Carl's nape and, for a moment, all he cared about was that something he lost had been found.

The moment was fleeting at best.

Martin dropped his hands from Carl’s face and pulled away abruptly, unresolved hurts resurfacing right alongside unresolved feelings.

“You left,” Martin reminded him. He stepped back, pointing accusingly at Carl. “ _You_ left. You can’t be mad at me after all these years when _you_ were the one who left.”

Carl looked dazed as he tried to process Martin’s words, his chin still lifted from Martin’s hastily abandoned kiss.

“I, I had to,” he stammered. Martin scoffed, forcing Carl to his feet. “Martin, I had to,” he said again, reaching hesitantly for Martin, who stood stubbornly out of arm’s reach. “There was no other choice. I gave up two flight schools for you. I _had_ to go to uni. My dad would’ve killed me if I didn’t.”

Martin crossed his arms over his chest. “So you left.”

“I had to,” Carl repeated.

“And you never came back.”

“Don’t fucking make it sound like I walked away and never looked back,” Carl growled, marching into Martin’s space. “I came back over Christmas holidays and _you_ were gone.” Carl accentuated his point with a small shove. “No note, no call, nothing. I went round to your house and your mum gave me a number but it never worked. Your sister gave me a city and I spent two days traipsing around Barris looking for you. I called flight schools,” he said, getting louder, “I called training programs, I called private instructors. I contacted local cadet corps. I-”

Carl bit his tongue and turned away from Martin, shaking his head. He made his way back to the desk before walking towards Martin again. He paced a few times in the small space as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to look at Martin or not.

“Carl,” Martin tried.

“I drove to Duxford every three months just hoping to run into you,” he admitted from the desk end of the loop. A frown creased Carl’s features when he glanced back over his shoulder. “Don’t fucking make it sound like I never looked back. I looked; I looked for years.”

Martin tried to speak but his words were lost under the avalanche of new information. He opened his mouth and closed it again as Carl sat down on the desk, his shoulders hunched and his face in his hands. Martin edged tentatively closer to the desk.

“Carl-”

“All this time,” Carl mumbled, causing Martin to a stop a few steps away from him,” all this time and nothing; no sign, no trace.” He dropped his hands into his lap with a sigh. “I thought it was a lost cause until my buddy Theo called me up to tell me these ridiculous stories about this one plane charter operation based out of Fitton. Fitton, of all places,” he said with a weak chuckle. “Run by a sixty-something year old woman whose bark was just as bad as her bite; staffed by her son and a down and out first officer and a captain...”

Carl looked up at Martin. If he was surprised to see Martin standing closer than before, he didn’t let on.

“A captain who was such a stickler for rules and regulations that he wouldn’t move a plane from one hangar to another after he’d gone out of hours.”

“Technically, the manual doesn’t specify the aircraft being in flight,” Martin muttered. “It simply states that a pilot isn’t allowed to operate an aircraft once he’s gone out of hours.”

Martin didn’t miss the quick roll of Carl’s eyes.

“It had to be you,” Carl shrugged. “Who else could it be? You, who got your briefcase stolen at least once a week at school. I told you not to carry that thing,” he said with a shake of his head. “So, I put in the transfer and I moved here, to Fitton. To work at an airfield that does less traffic in a year than Heathrow does in a week. Just so I could see you.”

“That was five years ago,” Martin pointed out. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Carl’s expression softened as he shrugged again. He looked down at his hands in his lap, pushing up his sleeve with a finger, just enough to see the bars on his arm.

“I didn’t know what to say,” he mumbled. “On my very first day, you marched up here, just like you did today, to complain about your flight plan.” Carl lifted his head to look at Martin. “You looked right at me and... nothing. Just went on with your complaints as if it didn’t matter, as if none of it mattered; as if none of it ever mattered.” 

Carl tugged his sleeve down again. He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest in a protective gesture that coated Martin’s mouth with guilt.

“I... I was stunned. I was so happy to see you but it’d never crossed my mind that you might’ve forgotten.” Carl laughed, the sound lacking any humor at all. “It took me eighteen years to find you and you forgot.”

Martin shook his head. “Carl, I didn’t forget.”

The hint of skepticism in Carl’s eyes cut Martin more than he expected. Despite his best intentions, Martin’s words sounded hollow even to his ears. He straightened his sleeves as he tried to organize the thoughts in his mind. Martin’s eyes dropped down to his wrist when his fingers brushed over the metal of his watch. He undid the button of his cuff and took his watch off. Martin stepped forward, folding up his sleeve to reveal his tattoo: four black bars in the same style and location as Carl’s.

“I didn’t forget,” he said again, holding his arm out, offering Carl the only proof he had. “I couldn’t. Every time I failed my CPL I thought of you. I...” Martin hesitated, pulling back a bit. “It always felt like you left because I wasn’t good enough. As much as I wanted to see you again, I didn’t think I could face you if I wasn’t a pilot. I _never_ forgot you, Carl, I just...”

Martin cautiously reached for Carl’s hand. The silent acceptance of his touch gave him hope and Martin gently turned Carl’s arm over. He slid his thumb over Carl’s skin, pushing back the edge of his sleeve. Martin followed the horizontal lines with his thumb, wondering how he’d been blind for so long to something that now seemed painfully obvious.

“I just didn’t put it together,” he admitted. Martin looked up at Carl, trying to figure out why he hadn’t seen it. “I mean, your hair, it’s-”

“Lighter, I know,” Carl nodded. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It seems to be doing that as I age. Yours isn’t quite as red as I remember either.”

“No,” Martin agreed, “not so much.”

He studied Carl’s face as he mentally debated whether to ask the big question that hovered in the forefront of his mind. Martin let go of Carl’s hand and took a seat next to him on the desk. He folded up his other sleeve, delaying the inevitable; it was a question that couldn’t go unanswered.

“Why aren’t you a pilot?” he asked gently. “Not, not that there’s anything wrong with being an air traffic controller,” Martin tried to explain. “It’s just... you were always better than me, at everything.”

Carl’s slight nod suggested that he’d expected Martin to ask. He watched Martin for a moment before letting out a little sigh.

“I’m color blind.”

Martin’s heart sank as the severity of those three words hit him with enough force to leave him feeling winded. Carl dropped his gaze from Martin and continued before he could speak.

“Not enough that I’m immune to Dave’s wife’s fashion statements,” Carl said, in a casual tone Martin recognized as deflection, “but just enough that I can’t pass that damn test. I got to nine plates once,” he said softly, “but I can never get to fifteen.”

Martin held his tongue as subtle signs of frustration spread over Carl’s face. He knew how much pity stung, even coming from the most well-intentioned of people; there was nothing he could say and nothing Carl wanted to hear. Martin himself wasn’t a very good pilot; he was adequate on his best days and he appeared downright poor next to Douglas but he could fly. Even when he failed his instrument rating, and failed his CPL, and then failed his CPL again, at least Martin had the opportunity to improve, to better himself. He couldn’t imagine what it must feel like for Carl to be denied his dream and faulted for something he couldn’t control.

Martin took Carl’s hand from the desk and twined his fingers with his own. Carl looked up and smiled at him, the tension slowly melting away as an important understanding passed between them unsaid.

“I’m glad you made it, Martin,” Carl said, giving Martin’s hand a little squeeze. “I just wish I could be up there with you. You’re living the dream.”

“No, I’m not.”

Confusion wrinkled Carl’s brow.

“The dream was for us to fly _together_ ,” Martin reminded him. “Without you next to me on the flight deck, it’s not complete. But now that... you found me,” he smiled, turning their joined hands so he could see the stripes on Carl’s arm, “now that I have my first officer again, we’re that much closer.”

Martin leaned forward, pulling Carl into a kiss.

It started slow and gentle but Carl brought both hands to Martin’s face and drew him into a deeper, hungrier touch. Martin almost sighed as the familiar nip of teeth and taste of Carl took him back to summers in Wokingham, long drives to Duxford, and kisses stolen under aircraft in the exhibition hall; days that felt like they hadn’t been so long ago. He noted the familiar details but reveled in the new ones--a growl, a flick, a twist--that reminded him that he’d finally found what he long feared had been irrevocably lost.

Carl pulled back just enough to look at Martin. He draped his arms over Martin’s shoulders and laid their foreheads together.

“You know I’m still not going to use standard phraseology in our aircraft communications, right?” he grinned.

Martin laughed, pressing forward to meet Carl in another kiss.

“I’m counting on it.”


End file.
